New York Times:
Kash Patel Has Plan to Remake the F.B.I. Into a Tool of Trump
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the F.B.I. has called for firing the agency’s top officials, shutting down its Washington headquarters and prosecuting journalists.
“Fire the top ranks of the F.B.I.” Encourage Congress to demand testimony exposing “every single bit of filth and corruption” at the agency, and withhold its funding “until the documents come in.” Prosecute leakers and journalists. Replace the national security work force with “people who won’t undermine the president’s agenda.”
These are among a long list of changes Kash Patel recommended in his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters.” President-elect Donald J. Trump has now said he intends to make Mr. Patel the next F.B.I. director.
Mr. Trump had wanted to install Mr. Patel as deputy F.B.I. director during his first term, but Attorney General William P. Barr, who portrayed him as manifestly unqualified in his own memoir, told the White House that Mr. Patel would become deputy F.B.I. director “over my dead body.”
Why settle for deputy? If you’re going for bad, go for broke.
While it’s not dispositive, Trump’s choices for DOJ and FBI make clear why this pardon happened. And the stated reasoning needs to be part of every discussion.
I remember when we used to call that ‘context’.
“With swift action, South Koreans saved their democracy. Take note, Americans.”
Associated Press via PBS:
Trump transition team signs agreement to allow official background checks on nominees, staff
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team on Tuesday signed an agreement to allow the Justice Department to conduct background checks on his nominees and appointees after a weeks-long delay.
The step lets Trump transition aides and future administration staffers obtain security clearances before Inauguration Day to access classified information about ongoing government programs, an essential step for a smooth transition of power. It also allows those nominees who are up for Senate confirmation to face the background checks lawmakers want before voting on them.
And just as that happens, this happens…
Fox 13 (Tampa Bay):
Hillsborough Sheriff Chad Chronister withdraws from President-elect Trump's DEA nomination
"To be nominated by President-Elect Donald J. Trump to serve as Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration is the honor of a lifetime," Chronister said. "Over the past several days, as the gravity of this very important responsibility set in, I’ve concluded that I must respectfully withdraw from consideration."
Also, I suppose he wants to spend more time with his family.
On the other hand, there was growing opposition from Trump loyalists. Chronister wasn’t pure enough, apparently. This, from The Guardian:
Trump’s DEA pick Chad Chronister withdraws from consideration
Trump’s pick of Chronister for the DEA job drew backlash from conservatives, who raised concerns over his actions during the Covid-19 pandemic and him saying that his office “does not engage in federal immigration enforcement activities”.
Julia Preston/New Yorker:
A Kamala Harris Canvasser’s Education
Even on my first day, I sensed dissonance between the campaign’s celebrity-inflected exuberance and the raw divisions I saw in the streets.
But what I encountered at the doors in Latino neighborhoods were disaffected people under severe economic stress—workers with little time to watch television and no consistent or reliable channels for political news, who received scattershot information about both Harris and Trump on their mobile phones, and were disgusted by what they perceived as the nasty and pointless name-calling they saw there. I recall the harried look of a Puerto Rican grandmother, one of three registered Democrats in a walk-up apartment crammed with boxes and randomly placed furniture. She was home with her grandchildren, a wailing toddler and a teen-ager, while their parents were juggling day and night shifts at their jobs on a Saturday. She wanted to vote for Harris, she said, if she could get to the polls on Election Day. Often, my conversations started with voters telling me they did not plan to vote because they did not see any point in it.
There’s a lot more to the article than this snippet, including the strong ties Trump had to his voters and the weak ones Democrats had to theirs. She almost won, regardless, but if you want to know why she didn’t, there it is.
Who could be against Pete Hegseth? I mean, besides apparently everyone who worked with him, from Concerned Veterans of America to Fox News. Oh, and his mother. So, what’s the problem?
Michelle Goldberg/New York Times:
If Anyone Can Save the Democrats, It’s Ben Wikler
Over coffee with Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, this summer, I was talking about my own unproductive tendency toward political despair, and my recurrent fantasies of moving abroad to give my kids a start in a less cruel country. Such thinking was completely foreign to him. I remember him saying that when he sees a crisis, his instinct is always to find the way through, no matter how narrow or convoluted the path. He seems to relish the opportunity to rise to a challenge.
I was reminded of this conversation when I spoke to Wikler on Sunday, after he’d announced that he was running for Democratic National Committee chair. The political discussions I’ve had since Donald Trump was re-elected have generally been bleak and depressive, at best leavened with a bit of gallows humor. But while Wikler admitted to the same anxiety many of us are feeling, he sounded animated, almost cheerful.
“The thing that I find energizing is the opportunity to fight back,” he said. “I’m drawn to big fights where if you pour everything you can into it, you can make a difference in a way that actually affects people’s lives.” This combination of focused pragmatism and deep, genuine optimism is part of what makes Wikler the obvious candidate to rebuild a broken and demoralized Democratic Party.
We can all take a page from Ben. He did marvelously as Wisconsin Democratic Chair. There’s a reason he’s one of a handful of state chairs whose name you might already know.
That makes it 220-215, a D gain of one seat, but really 219-215 because no Matt Gaetz.
Hal Sparks and Cliff Schecter on what we should do with Twitter:
